Monthly Archives: April 2015

By MARK SHERMAN — Associated Press
Supreme Court justices engaged in an impassioned debate Wednesday about capital punishment, trading unusually combative words in a case involving a drug used in several botched executions.Continue reading: The State

. . . Putnam’s bill, H. 4038, was introduced and referred to the House Judiciary Committee today. Putnam is the only listed sponsor of the bill. Tyler Jones, spokesman for the S.C. House Democrats, has already come out against Putnam’s bill. “Since Republicans are always in a time warp, we’re wondering if Rep. Putnam will offer a death by guillotine option as well,” Jones says.

Ron Kaz, a James Island resident and member of the advocacy group South Carolinians Abolishing the Death Penalty, says he was unaware of Putnam’s proposal before it was introduced today. “It’s obviously unnecessary, and I’d like to think it’s unlikely to go anywhere, but given the nature of some of the strange things that come out of our legislature, we’ll never know for sure,” Kaz says.

“The FBI’s 3-decade use of microscopic hair analysis to incriminate defendants was a complete disaster,” according to Innocence Project co-founder Peter Neufeld. The Justice Department and FBI recently admitted that almost every examiner in the elite forensics team exaggerated their findings. What this will mean for the wrongfully convicted remains to be seen.Continue reading: InquisitrRelated:St Louis Post-Dispatch: Missouri executed a man last year whose capital trials were marked by flawed FBI lab testimony about hair samples.Philadelphia Magazine: FBI: We Gave Flawed Testimony in 6 Pennsylvania Death Row Cases

National support for the death penalty is still in decline. A new Pew poll released last week found that 56 percent of Americans now support the death penalty, a decline of over 20 percent from its peak in 1996. Opposition to it rose to 38 percent. These numbers might still seem good for capital-punishment proponents, even considering the overall trend of decline, but they mask a deeper shift.Continue reading: The Atlantic

Death penalty states are continuing to deal with the fallout after a major U.S. drug manufacturer announced that it will no longer sell corrections departments a sedative used for lethal injections. The company also asked departments to return any supply of the drug they had purchased.
The Arizona Department of Corrections confirmed to the Arizona Republic Tuesday that Akorn, an Illinois-based drug company that manufactures midazolam, asked the department to return the supply it purchased in 2014.
Continue reading: Huffington Post

Excerpt: “The share of women who favor the death penalty has fallen 10 points since 2011, while men’s views have shown virtually no change. Men are now 15 points more likely than women to favor the death penalty (64% vs. 49%).”Click here for the April 18 Pew Research Center article (including a link to the full report.)

. . . “I shouldn’t have sat on death row 30 years,” Hinton said after his release Friday. “All they had to do was test the gun. But when you think you are high and mighty and you’re above the law, you don’t have to answer to nobody.”Read the article at al.com